Fox News agreed in April 2023 to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit over the network’s repeated airing of false and damaging claims that said, among other things, the voting technology company had rigged the 2020 Presidential Election for Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Dominion Voting sued Fox for $1.6 billion arguing that the news network had peddled “phony conspiracy theories that claimed its equipment switched votes from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden,” the New York Times reported.
There was no evidence for such claims.
There was a trove of evidence that Fox News knew its claims were false and reported them anyway.
This is the difference between a news network and a propaganda network.
The Times reported that “the settlement, one of the largest ever in a defamation case, was the latest extraordinary twist in a case that has been full of remarkable disclosures that exposed the inner workings of the most powerful voice in conservative news.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/18/business/fox-news-dominion-trial-settlement
One of the most shocking revelations in the court documents was that there were actual journalists working for Fox News who questioned the false claims.
Real journalists at Fox News?
Who knew?
Such journalists cared whether the news that was reported on the network was truthful. They understood that providing viewers factual information was not just their duty but their responsibility. They understood that a democracy depended on an informed electorate. They understood that baseless claims of election fraud risked the very notion of free and fair elections necessary to maintain a democracy.
But such highfalutin ideas about journalism stood no chance against the like of such purveyors of disinformation as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham, and Jeannine Pirro.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/18/business/fox-news-dominion-trial-settlement
Why did Fox News act in such a way that sabotaged the foundations of democracy?
Here are a few reasons:
Donald Trump and his equally democracy-averse cronies told the network’s commentators to spread disinformation.
Trump, Fox News, and the network’s viewers — like the Sackler family, the opioid OxyContin, and those who became addicted to OxyContin — became dependent on each other.
In addition, Fox News was losing viewers to even more conservative, even more conspiracy-minded networks.
CNN reported that the correspondence included in the depositions and other court documents “reveals that the network’s senior-most executives and highest-profile hosts chose not to disclose what they believed to be the truth of the election out of fear that that the facts would alienate Fox News’ audience and throw the highly profitable business into ruin.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/business/fox-news-dominion-lies/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/12/27/fox-news-viewers-switch-to-newsmax/
Fox News’ prime-time commentators felt no more of a need to act responsibly while flinging feces in front of television cameras than chimpanzees feel a need to act responsible while flinging feces at each other.
Another reason why Fox News perpetuated lies instead of reporting the truth is found in the moral of the frog and the scorpion, which teaches us that we act according to our nature.
Why doesn’t Fox News present factual journalism?
Because, like the scorpion that stings the frog that results in both dying, Fox News lies because it is its nature to do so.
You should not expect Fox News to act as journalists because Fox News is a propaganda network.
Fox News is itself an oxymoron.
Fox News is neither a fox nor is it news – just as a circus peanut is neither a circus nor a peanut.
If Fox News had been honest about this, it could have claimed that suing it for not delivering factual news was no more actionable than suing a circus peanut because it was neither a circus nor a peanut.
Fox News’ conceit was that it claimed to be a news network.
Daniel Froomkin, an essayist for the website, Think, reported on a study by political scientists who paid 763 far-right Fox viewers to watch CNN.
Those in the sample heard “all sorts of things Fox wasn’t telling them. They processed that information. They took it in. They became more knowledgeable about what was really going on in the United States.”
“The experiment didn’t change their political preferences — certainly not in just one month. But it slightly altered their perceptions of certain key issues and political candidates,” the study concluded.
Fox News is a propaganda network disguising itself as a news network. News networks have reporters. Propaganda networks have propagandists. News networks practice independent journalism. Fox News treats Donald Trump not as a president to be held accountable but as a love interest to be fawned over.
Fox News peddles in lies, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories to defend a corrupt former president, and, in doing so, puts both the country and its democracy at risk.
Its lies played a part the country’s slow response to the damaging effects of climate change, in the deaths of Americans from COVID-19, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The global newspaper, The Financial News, said the Dominion Services’ lawsuit exposed the unalterable fact that Fox News only presented factual news when it benefitted it.
“The case serves nonetheless as a warning of the perils, even in an established democracy, of partisan journalism tipping over into propaganda,” the Financial News reported. “Fox pandered to its conservative viewership, but the alternative reality it created fed their tribalism and paranoia. When the Trump narrative parted ways with reality, viewers preferred hearing the lie. Fox continued to give them what they wanted.”
https://www.ft.com/content/78826749-892b-42b6-9053-ef613016ae93
Dominion Voting presented internal communications, emails, and text messages that documented that Fox News’ executives and commentators knew their claims were false but allowed their on-air commentators to air those claims.
Fox’s claims of election fraud on the part of Dominion Voting were false and without merit.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-settlement/index.html
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/01/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-history
CNN published a story that included 20 instances of Fox News stories and tweets that that Dominion Voting said were defamatory.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/media/dominion-fox-news-allegations/index.html
If Fox News had indeed been a responsible network, it would have reported its $787.5 million settlement, apologized to its viewers, and explained how it was changing its practices so that it would do a better job of presenting factual information.
Fox did not do this.
Because it is not a news network – and I repeat myself.
Fox media critic Howard Kurtz, who had once worked for the Washington Post and the Daily Beast, said he “believed I should be covering” the Dominion lawsuit.
“But,” he added, “the company has decided, as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/18/business/fox-news-dominion-trial-settlement
Kurtz may get another chance to report on a defamation suit against Fox News.
Smartmatic, another voting technology company, is suing Fox News for defamation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/12/01/smartmatic-fox-news-lawsuit-rupert-murdoch/
The problems with Fox News claiming to be a news network are longstanding and go far beyond its reporting of bogus claims of election fraud.
It is not a news network.
It has never been a news network.
Roger Ailes, founder of Fox News, did not create the network to be a news network. He created it to be a partisan network, and it has become, as Rolling Stone magazine put it, “the most profitable propaganda machine in history.”
Fox News become state-sanctioned television during the Trump presidency.
This runs counter to the fundamental notion of the framers of our Constitution, who agreed that a democracy depended on informed citizens, and citizens therefore depended on an independent press to keep them informed.
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, the New Republic’s Alex Shephard, and many others have observed that President Donald Trump treats “Fox News like state TV.”
Bret Baier, an anchor at Fox News, has acknowledged this criticism, saying it “pains” him when he reads or hears that the cable news channel became “state TV” for the Trump administration.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18275835/fox-news-trump-propaganda-tom-rosenstiel
https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-empire-and-changed-news-forever
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fox-news-propaganda-eric-alterman/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house
An essay on the Vox (not Fox) website said there is considerable evidence to support this criticism.
“Trump constantly watches Fox News, tweets out claims he hears on the network, reportedly speaks regularly with Sean Hannity, and gives the majority of his interviews to Fox News. World leaders as well as members of Congress quickly learned that one of the best ways to communicate a message to Trump is to say it on Fox News,” the Vox essay said.
“To top it off, Trump’s previous director of communications and deputy chief of staff, Bill Shine, is the former co-president of Fox News. Shine’s presence at the White House along with Trump’s ties to on-air personalities like Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, all but cemented the unofficial relationship between Trump and the right-wing news network.
“None of this is normal.
“Administrations and politicians have always sought to use the media to their advantage, of course, but this feels different. It certainly seems like Fox News has essentially become state TV.
“So how concerned should the average American be?”
Tom Rosenstiel, a media scholar and executive director at the American Press Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable journalism, said that Fox News’s approach to journalism represents a clear and present danger to American democracy.
“Once you start to shade the facts, once you engage in persuasion rather than informing, once you’re in cahoots with the government, you’re really destroying the constitutional relationship between the press and the government. And you’re doing a disservice to these citizens, to your audience.
“The most important conservative television news source in America is currently pandering to an extremist president. It’s distorting the Republican Party. It’s damaging the Republican Party. It’s changing conservatism. Fox is making the news, not covering it. It’s remaking the Republican Party, not informing its audience,” Rosenstiel said.
“The second big threat is that it completely distorts what people think and expect from journalists. It has made it much, much harder for the vast majority of journalists who work in local newspapers, websites, and magazines — who are engaged in trying to check the facts — to do their jobs. Because Fox News has helped turn the national image of journalism into a charade, and that makes it harder for people who are trying to do real journalism and inform citizens about the world around them.”
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18275835/fox-news-trump-propaganda-tom-rosenstiel
Robert Jones, author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, wrote an essay for Time magazine that imagined an America without Fox News.
Here is what it would look like, Jones said:
- “Republicans would dump Donald Trump.”
- “The GOP would abandon efforts to restrict voter access and attempts at minority rule.”
- “The country would be far less divided by the culture war battles over abortion, LGBTQ rights, and public schools.”
- “No major political party in America would sanction the racist use of ‘Great Replacement Theory’ rhetoric and the demonization of immigrants”.
- “American democracy would be far less threatened by the violent politics of white Christian resentment and Christian nationalism.”
